Data Centre LIVE 2025: Susanna Kass, InfraPrime - Keynote
In an inspiring keynote at Data Centre LIVE, Susanna Kass, Operating Partner (co-founder at InfraPrime) at Digital Gravity Infrastructure Partners, delivered a wide-ranging call to action.
She urged data centre leaders to move beyond net zero targets and embrace a radical model for carbon-free, resource-efficient infrastructure.
Her framework, dubbed Absolute Zero, prioritises real-time energy transparency, system circularity and long-term thinking rooted in measurable science and community integration.
The emissions truth behind data and AI
Susanna opened with a clear-eyed view of the digital economy’s environmental cost.
“A single megawatt data centre consumes 26 million litres of water and emits 7.7 million kilograms of CO₂,” she stated.
Drawing comparisons to air travel and household energy use, she set the tone for the urgent rethinking of infrastructure.
AI, she said, has accelerated demand beyond anything seen during cloud adoption.
“This is not a hype cycle—it’s a structural transformation,” she warned. Training large language models consumes immense compute power, driven by trillions of tokens and billions of parameters.
“Machines don’t read – they tokenise,” she explained. “That scale of operation is redefining how we build and power digital infrastructure.”
Rethinking design: from linear to circular
The traditional data centre model – consume resources, operate at full tilt, and discard waste – must end, Susanna argued. Her Absolute Zero framework incorporates:
- Lifecycle carbon accounting, not just annual reporting
- Energy use matching hour by hour, using on-site renewables and smart storage
- Heat reuse via district networks
- Land, water and material optimisation, mapped against the UN Sustainable Development Goals
“The cleanest data centre,” she said, “is the one you don’t need to build.” Overprovisioning must be tackled, and performance per watt, not raw output, must become the new metric.
Designing for circularity includes reusing waste heat for community benefit, such as heating swimming pools in Paris or growing strawberries on rooftops. She also called for planning beyond PUE, addressing scope 3 supply chain emissions, construction impacts, and the decommissioning phase.
Real-time energy use and intelligent computing
Susanna introduced Google’s hourly matching model, tracking clean energy availability and aligning workloads accordingly.
“This is what real net zero looks like,” she said. On-site generation, flexible loads and hydrogen fuel cells are part of her vision.
She praised accelerated computing as a way forward, referencing Nvidia’s shift from 960 CPUs to just 2 GPUs for specific workloads – delivering 84x efficiency.
“Yes, GPUs consume more energy per chip – but they replace thousands of CPUs. The maths works,” she said.
Designing for 600kW racks, she added, will require a rethink of cooling, power and layout—but brings huge gains in land and material use.
“We’re gaining 1,000x performance per watt every eight years,” she said. “That’s the curve we must ride.”
AI itself, she argued, must also be used to orchestrate sustainable design: guiding cooling, energy management and even societal infrastructure.
Community, accountability and the future generation
A recurring theme was the idea that data centres should not be isolated assets, but integrated parts of their local environments.
“We can’t just emit waste heat. We must harness it,” Susanna said.
Whether it’s district heating or industrial symbiosis, infrastructure must serve wider systems.
She also discussed utility engagement, linking data centre design to grid evolution and decarbonisation.
“We must help green the grid,” she said. “Our goal isn’t just 24/7 clean inside the fence – it’s giving surplus back to the community.”
Addressing scope 3, she called for full value chain visibility: from mined materials to shipping to disposal.
“It’s not just about what you buy – it’s how it got there, and what happens next,” she said.
In her closing remarks, Susanna brought the focus back to values.
“Sustainability is about leadership and legacy. We are stewards of the future for generations to come,” she said. “We must leave behind more than machines, we must leave behind possibility.”
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